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Smokers: Tax 'Em to Death

I think it’s unseemly for a state government to profit from an addictive and deadly product, but at least it’s better than a grocery tax. Many who viewed City Weekly’s video of smokers commenting on the new tobacco tax [see “The Year of No New Taxes,” CityWeekly.net, March 1] had your own reasons for hating it.

Anonymous wrote the tax is unfair, but noted in consolation, “...[T]here are a large number of low-income earners that are smokers, and one day this bad habit is gonna catch up to them and they are going to need medical care and the tax payers are going to be the ones paying for that ...”

That sounds like a great argument in favor of robust cessation programs, Anonymous, which are continually underfunded by the same people who passed the tobacco tax, but an even better argument like yours can be made about gasoline.

“They [could] get the same amount of money by raising the gasoline tax by a little.

Gasoline use hurts everyone’s air. Most smokers only hurt themselves,” Fredrik Svensson wrote as briefly as he did brilliantly.

Nate Stansfield agreed the tax was unfair, but took issue with the Legislature being referred to as “LDS dominated” in the video. “Why blame the church for everything?” Point taken: Mormons and non-LDS were on both sides of the vote, so it was unnecessary to note the obvious in this context.